


Little People Know

by LetsJustWrite



Series: Families Are Built, Not Broken [3]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Adoption, Alexithymia, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anxiety, Food Issues, Gavroche POV, Gavroche has ADHD, Gen, Past Child Abuse, Past Child Neglect, Swearing, social workers who can't do their jobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-19 09:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16531484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LetsJustWrite/pseuds/LetsJustWrite
Summary: Gavroche was so happy when Eponine told them she was adopting him and Azelma and getting them out of their parents house. So why is he so miserable? Or; the first half-day Gavroche spends in Eponine's house.





	1. Eponine's House

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Social workers who can't do their jobs  
> Mentions of drugs, drug traffickers and danger from drug traffickers (all in the past)  
> A lot of abuse and neglect mentions  
> Food issues
> 
> I want Gavroche to have ADHD so if something about my portrayal of that seems off please tell me.

The house was gigantic. That was Gavroche’s first thought as they pulled up.

Valjean was driving the car, which was sort of weird because he had never actually met him before, and Eponine hadn’t actually said anything about him when she had visited them while she was finalizing the adoption papers, except that he was Cosette’s dad and also, weird.

Gavroche didn’t know if he was going to be living with them, too, along with Cosette and Marius, but he thought that this house was probably big enough to let them all have different bedrooms if they wanted. Though Eponine, Cosette and Marius were probably sharing one. Their bed must almost be as big as the house.

Valjean took the suitcases Eponine had brought them (and really, she must be rich now, buying nonessential things like suitcases), but Azelma grabbed hers out of his hand and Gavroche decided he didn’t really want some strange old man carrying his stuff either and took his, too.

Cosette opened the door for them and hugged him. She didn’t hug Azelma because Azelma did not like being hugged and she had met them enough times to know that. A tall, gangly man stood hovering behind her and Gavroche guessed he was Marius. He had met Marius before but didn’t really remember it.

Marius said something but Gavroche didn’t hear what it was because he was too busy staring at the house. It was huge. To his left was a coathook with more coats and sweaters than he thought three (or even four) people could possibly wear. Underneath the coats were a pile of shoes, and on a box further along the hallway sat even more shoes. Having so many shoes seemed like a waste of money Eponine would never condemn but he didn’t care who’s shoes they were as long as he had shoes for school. His gym teacher had kept yelling at him for not having proper gym shoes until he just stopped coming to school.

He supposed Eponine would put him in a school now. He knew they could put him in care if he didn’t go to school because the truant officer had told him so many times. He hadn’t cared before but now he thought he might want to stay. Eponine could be a jerk but she was nicer than Mom and Dad. He didn’t know how it was to live with the others.  
He liked Cosette but he knew that people could be nice on the outside but not really nice at all. There’d been that social worker who had come to the school and talked to him and been so nice and promised that he could tell her anything. 

When he told her he sometimes worried that one of the drug traffickers that came to do business with his parents might hurt them she talked to his parents. He had a broken pinky the next day and he never saw her again, but she’s written a report on him and he sneaked it out of the secretary’s office. It said that he was at-risk, in danger of becoming a drug addict and should be put in a special class. He’d ripped it up and flushed it down the toilet in a fit of anger.

Marius, he didn’t really know but Eponine said he was cool and he looked wimpy, like the kid in his old class who cried every time the teacher called him up to the board to do a problem.

Valjean was the real danger. He still didn’t know if Valjean lived here or not, but he was jacked. If he wanted to hurt Gavroche he could and Gavroche would never be able to say anything because even if anyone believed him nobody would be able to protect him from someone that strong. He crossed his toes inside his old, ratty sneakers and hoped that Valjean didn’t live here.


	2. Gavroche's Room

Eponine opened the door of a room. She had already shown Azelma her room, and Azelma had immediately locked herself in. Gavroche noticed that there was a lock on his door too. He turned it a few times just to make sure it worked properly.

“So here are your drawers and here’s your closet, but you can put your clothes wherever you want, I don’t give a shit. We would have bought you some new ones but I don’t know your sizes anymore so we can go shopping tomorrow.”

“What about a Gameboy?”

“What about a Gameboy?” 

“Nothing.” He bounced his leg. Eponine had never hurt them, would never hurt them, but sometimes she got in a mood and it was better not to speak to her when she was in one. He heard her sigh.

“No, really, what about a Gameboy?” 

He looked at her from under her eyelashes. She didn’t look like she was in a mood. And she had gotten him his old one, so it wasn’t like she could say it was a frivolous luxury they couldn’t afford. Especially not when she had bought the suitcases, and so many shoes and coats.

“I want one. My old one got broken. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I just hid it near the dumpster for safekeeping and it rained!”

“Gav, it’s okay. But I can’t get you a new one.” She moved closer to him and he flinched. She moved back again. “Sorry. But I don’t think the stores sell it anymore. But we can get you a phone. We were planning to anyways. So you can call us if you need us. They have games on them.”

Gavroche knew they had games on them. Gavroche had watched everyone in his class, including the kids that lived in his neighborhood, and ate out of the same dumpsters, get a phone while he couldn’t get one because if he did his parents would take it to sell it or use it for themselves. And now Eponine, who’s fault it was that he had stayed so long in that shitty house because if she had come to get him earlier he would have gotten a phone at the same time every one else got one and would have known the stores didn’t sell Gameboys anymore, was _explaining_ to him that they had games on them.

“Whatever.” He shrugged and walked out to hide himself in the bathroom he was supposed to share with Azelma. Not his first choice since the window was too small to climb out of but Eponine was in his room and he didn’t know the surroundings well enough to know where else to go.


	3. Dinner

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The tense changes in this chapter because I realized I wanted it to be present-tense in the second-to-last paragraph of this chapter and I was too lazy to go back to change the previous two chapters.
> 
> Also, in my country we don't have dining rooms so if I got how they work wrong please tell me.

“Gavroche?” Eponine knocks on his door, and he can’t remember the last time someone had knocked on his door or, in fact, the last time he had had a door. “We’re having dinner.”

Gavroche is hungry. Eponine had bought them hamburgers on the way over here, but that had been hours ago. Except that the only reason he was still in the house that all the windows on the second floor opened inwards for some reason and he hadn’t gone downstairs because he didn’t want to see Valjean.

“Not hungry,” he calls back, even though now that he thought about it it would be worth it to see Valjean if it meant getting out of this room. He was going stir-crazy in here. Nothing to look at but the walls and the dresser and the closet and the suitcase that he hadn’t unpacked, and he had looked at them all at least a thousand times.

“There’s ice cream for dessert.” 

He jumps up and unlocked the door. Ice cream was definitely worth it.

Cosette and Marius are in the dining room (and what sort of rich people had a dining room?) when he, Eponine and Azelma come down, but Valjean was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he was in the bathroom. But they sit down and Marius uncovers a crock pot full of Chinese noodles and he still doesn’t appear.

“Where’s Valjean?” he blurts out before he could stop himself.

“He went home,” Cosette says. Of course, that was it, he shouldn’t have worried, he had already figured out that the guy had his own house, but-

“Is he around here often?” Azelma stares down at her plate, focusing entirely on eating and not on his idiotic questions. Eponine wouldn’t let anyone hurt him but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t make him leave the table and he was hungry and didn’t know how to steal food from here yet.

“Yeah.” Cosette smiles at him. “He’s my dad. Well, my adoptive dad. My real dad left my mom when she got pregnant with me. She died when I was very young.”

“I don’t have a dad either” Marius says suddenly. “Or-or a mom.” He clears his throat awkwardly. “Um, they’re both dead.”

“Cool,” says Gavroche because A: he doesn’t really care since he only met Marius like once before, and B: he doesn’t know what the guy expects him to say. He does feel sorry for Cosette, though, because she’s nice and he likes her even if he doesn’t trust her.

Azelma finishes and disappears before even Gavroche finishes, but that’s fine because he’s still way ahead of the adults. Cosette and Marius haven’t even finished half their plates. But when he slurps up the last noodle he isn’t as quick to disappear as Azelma and Cosette turns to him.

“Do you want more?” 

“Yes.” He nods quickly and reaches for the serving spoon. Of course he wants more. Who wouldn’t want more food? And now he remembers that Eponine had promised him ice cream and that was the reason he came down in the first place. He isn’t sure if he can say it with Cosette and Marius there but Eponine didn’t say not to so he asks her, his mouth full of noodles.

“‘Ponine, you said there would be ice cream.”

“After dinner.” She looks pointedly at his plate and he would never pass up food anyways so he finishes quickly.

“Come into the kitchen with me,” Eponine tells him when he does. He follows her into a kitchen that is almost as big as his parents’ apartment. 

“Here’s the ice cream,” she says and hands it to him. “There’s more if you want it. Also, you can take anything from the fridge or the freezer or the cabinets. At any time of day. Whatever, whenever, your choice.” Gavroche nods, but he can’t really comprehend the future because his stomach feels so full and he still has ice cream to eat before dinner ends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!~


End file.
